We ate at Bugatti a few hours ago with my wife. We are both Italian I am from Milano, she's from Torino. We moved in NYC seven years ago and we have been living in Queens since then. We tried many restaurants in Astoria and I have to say that Bugatti ranks quite low on our list. I was not expecting a top quality experience, since in my life I had the opportunity to try some of the best Italian specialties where I grew up, but at the same time I was quite disappointed with my experience at Bugatti. NYC Italian restaurants can be really good, Bugatti did not match other comparable experiences.
We started pretty well, the bread they have is really good, definitely Italian style both in texture and taste. I believe is made by Gianpiero Bakery on 30th avenue in Astoria(best bread in Astoria!), where we usually get our bread, but I am not entirely sure. A little plate of saut? zucchini with our bread seemed to be a nice complement. However, things started to look suspicious when we got the ""tagliere"", that in my book should be a cutting board with a selection of traditional cheeses and cold cuts. For 15 dollars I have got 5 slices of a really salty and flavorless prosciutto, 6 microscopic pieces of cheese (pecorino, asiago and fontina, none of them special at all), 5/6 grapes, some olives from a can and some walnuts. My wife looked at me almost embarrassed. One of the grapes actually fell on the floor while it was being handed to me and went under the waiter's shoe. If I had 10 dollars I could come up with a much better tagliere, trust me. Then I could charge 15, but the net price of the food over the cutting board was probably 4/5 dollars. Really disappointing. Morever, we had no bread left, and when we asked for more it took them 10 minutes. So I had to eat the already disappointing tagliere with no bread. Any true Italian place would make sure you have bread when you eat cheese and prosciutto. In this case they could not care less.
We continued with the spinach and ricotta ravioli in tomato mushroom sauce and fettuccine with duck ragout. It took them 45 minutes at least to bring us the food and nobody was caring too much about us. Lousy service...
The ravioli had no ricotta in the filling, resulting a little bitter and hard to chew. They dough was severely undercooked. The tomato sauce was way to acid, probably because the mushroom had released to much of their juices in the tomato. The tomato itself was very cheap, definitely from a can or a bottle, and not from real tomatoes. The fettuccine were actually ok, but I had an hard time tasting any duck in the ragout, which was actually not bad, but not memorable.
All of this, one appetizer and two ""primi"" as we say in Italy, for 60 dollars. No wine or alcohol, just a 750 ml. bottle of San Pellegrino that was, and at this point I was rather angry, 7 dollars.
I do not recommend this place to anybody, terrible experience. There are much better Italian restaurants in NY, I will not go back to Bugatti and I will not recommend it to my friends.
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